overwintering Fecundity of overwinters; propagation through cloning

[synclinorium]

Just something I was musing about today. For people who overwinter plants, at what age do the various species typically peak in terms of pod production, and how fast is the decline beyond this point? I guess what I'm wondering is how long most of you keep your overwinters before replacing them with new plants.

Along a similar line of thought, if one has a particularly valued specimen, will plants propagated via cloning eventually show degeneration in subsequent generations? I'm not very familiar with plant biology, but I assume telomere degradation would also apply to plant cells...

 

[cory_huck]

hang on.... Let me get the thesaurus out...

 

[synclinorium]

Heh, sorry, technical jargon. Basically, fecundity describes an organism's ability to reproduce. In the case of plants, fecundity is also related to growth rate, as new flowers are only produced with new growth... I'm also talking about fertility here, as that describes the actual rate of reproduction.

Just wondering if anyone noticed a difference in pod production over a period of several years, and if their plants reached a point where they were no longer producing a useful number of pods... I think most pepper species are considered short-lived perennials so I imagine 2-3 years would be the peak, but I don't know for sure.

 

[chile_freak]

the oldest one Ive heard of is 9yrs, which is a rocoto, Ive heard of some 6 yr superhots, I know this doesnt answer ur question but hey

 

[Pepper-Guru]

Pepper plants will keep going indefinately, assuming grower error isnt a factor. My mothers put out more and more each year. 6 yrs and counting with this group currently

 

[Dulac]

Heh, sorry, technical jargon. Basically, fecundity describes an organism's ability to reproduce. In the case of plants, fecundity is also related to growth rate, as new flowers are only produced with new growth... I'm also talking about fertility here, as that describes the actual rate of reproduction.

Just wondering if anyone noticed a difference in pod production over a period of several years, and if their plants reached a point where they were no longer producing a useful number of pods... I think most pepper species are considered short-lived perennials so I imagine 2-3 years would be the peak, but I don't know for sure.

That's a handy word. I'm not sure how long pepper species live since it's more economical and good breeding for me to grow them each year. I might do differently with my f1 hybrids .

Pepper plants will keep going indefinately, assuming grower error isnt a factor. My mothers put out more and more each year. 6 yrs and counting with this group currently

Have you tried this with c. annuum or c. frutescens? Is this species c. chinese? I wouldn't say indefinite since no living organism is .

 

[synclinorium]

I have a feeling that through domestication some peppers may have had their life-cycles shortened. Commercially it's not like most growers overwinter plants, so they're just concerned about production this year. Selecting for early production and large pod size may have also affected the plant's longevity. Most domesticated annums seem to be this way. It's no coincidence that if you look at wild populations, wild peppers seem to have a higher tolerance for the adverse conditions in which they are adapted and an inbuilt longevity as a result of their resilience. Since they're slow to mature, they need to have the ability to claim their turf and set up shop for several years while they spit out pods.

Babying the plants as we do allows us to extend their lives, but at some point you'd anticipate a decline.

 

[Aji hombre]

I have a feeling that through domestication some peppers may have had their life-cycles shortened. Commercially it's not like most growers overwinter plants, so they're just concerned about production this year. Selecting for early production and large pod size may have also affected the plant's longevity. Most domesticated annums seem to be this way. It's no coincidence that if you look at wild populations, wild peppers seem to have a higher tolerance for the adverse conditions in which they are adapted and an inbuilt longevity as a result of their resilience. Since they're slow to mature, they need to have the ability to claim their turf and set up shop for several years while they spit out pods.

I'd say that selection in a temperate climate where it freezes does exactly the same--you don't need to have a history of domestication. The wild, more perennial annuums all grow in areas where it's possible to survive a winter, yeah?

Also, I don't think telomere shortening is an issue for plants because all growth comes from meristematic tissue, witness plants that live for thousands of years. So as long as you're cloning from a cutting you would't need to worry. By the time the clone grows to size, most of the vegetative growth would be relatively fresh and it might as well have grown from a seed. I'd be interested if there is a limited number of times that you could clone from tissue culture of differentiated cells, though.

 

[synclinorium]

Well yeah, for plants that can produce before a freeze then it would have the same effect. Longevity isn't factoring into selection.

The cloning bit makes sense I suppose... convenient. I mean, it's common for nurseries to sell starter plants from a single parent stock. Interesting point about the tissue culture from differentiated cells. I wonder... plant biology is freaky, wish I knew more about it. If the new growth is all coming from meristematic tissue, then you wouldn't necessarily anticipate a significant dip in pod production as long as plant is continually cared for. Granted, eventually you'd expect the years of root and stem pruning to finally start having an adverse effect on the health of the plant. I know they recommend you replace potted citrus about every 10 years for this reason.

 

[Aji hombre]

I think that plant senescence is probably due more to stresses coming from having a whole bunch of old tissue, like xylem that's rotting away in the core of the trunk, parasites, etc.

It would be very cool to have the equipment and bench skills to clone plants from tissue culture. That would be a lot of fun.

I've got a couple of cuttings that I'm trying to propagate right now. Still waiting for them to show new growth. It's been a week now, and they're not dead yet so I'll take that as a positive sign.

 

[PaulG]

Great thread Sync; really interesting!

Hey Jeff, good luck with those cuttings!

 

[indoChilli]

Pepper plants will keep going indefinately, assuming grower error isnt a factor. My mothers put out more and more each year. 6 yrs and counting with this group currently

+1 on this, my local chili grow like weed (about 5 year now), even after you cut them up they keep showing sign of life. I life in tropical climate so, there's only rainny and sunny (up to 37C) season, i dont know how plant in 4 season grow, but for pepper, they likely live 4 ever. cmiiw

 

[seaman]

when I manage to overwinter I hope the plant is gonna live as long as possible; the best ones for overwintering are pubescens, frutescens and baccatum. for these generally the productivity peak is not in the 1st year.

 

[Capsicum Select]

I have a really good book on propagation: Making More Plants by Ken Druse
 
Very interesting read.  I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.

 

[Monkey Hunter]

I think that plant senescence is probably due more to stresses coming from having a whole bunch of old tissue, like xylem that's rotting away in the core of the trunk, parasites, etc.

In most plants as far as I know senescence is brought on by a shift in plant hormones, noticeable an increase in abscisic acid and ethylene gas, shifting growth for a vegetative/flowering/fruiting growth into dormancy/death. Fairly easy to mitigate as long as the plants are kept healthy and growing strong at all times, or through taking a tissue culture and starting with fresh plant stock (low abscisic acid and ethylene gas, high auxins/cytokinins/gibberellins) with identical dna.

It would be very cool to have the equipment and bench skills to clone plants from tissue culture. That would be a lot of fun.

I've known a couple people that learned to make tissue cultures, surprisingly it's really not much more complicated then taking a clone/slip. The biggest difference is you need to be really careful about sterility, similar to growing oyster mushrooms. I've never seen the need though, beyond novelty that is. Taking a slip has a similar effect in terms of reducing "negative" growth hormones (I use quotes as I don't see death as a negative thing, it's the common term though). In order to grow roots the hormone level shifts, creating the callus (mass of undifferentiated white cells), not as good but similar. For the same reason I doubt there's a limit on the number of times sequentially that a plant could be reproduced through tissue culture. As plants can easily revert cells from differentiate to undifferentiated (ie the cells composing the stem becoming a callus, then a root structure) I don't see why there'd be any change. The issue I'd see would be genetic drift, as cells don't divide perfectly every time, eventually all those small mutations/degradation of dna would eventually cause problems.